


To mutilated moons and to stones

by gloss



Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Grief, M/M, Post-TLJ, new film, with a tentatively sort of happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 06:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13024971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: Like this, start at the end again.After the end ofThe Last Jedi, grief, then Finn, come to Poe.





	To mutilated moons and to stones

> And our mirrors broke  
>  Sorrow grew  
>  So we gathered the splinters of sound  
>  ...  
>  We shall plant it together  
>  On the strings of a guitar  
>  And on the roof of our catastrophe,  
>  we shall play it  
>  To mutilated moons and to stones.
> 
> Mahmoud Darwish, "A Lover from Palestine", 1966. Trans. Sulafa Hijjawi

  


They are two cycles out from Crait, crammed together in the _Falcon_ , everyone hollow-eyed and rasp-voiced, when the grief comes for Poe. He's making his way down the passage from freight to gunnery when it happens. He staggers, is staggered, empties and falls.

He drops out of his skin. Takes a step but his boot doesn't hit the floor, just keeps plunging through empty space. He's cold, dropping, crumpling against the bulkhead.

He might as well have taken a blaster bolt to the gut. He touches his stomach, in fact, expecting (hoping for) a warm gush of blood. Nothing's there, just cold, fingers that won't bend without aching effort and eyes gone kaleidoscopic and brimming.

Distantly, he hears BB-8 ding a few times, then scurry off. Poe's still falling, though he knows quite well that he is in fact sprawled out in the passage. He gasps for air at the same time he retches against the very thought.

The names of the dead clog his blood like gravel, scrape raw as they fill his throat. There are so many. Each one ought to be spoken on its own, in reverence and respect, but their sheer number exerts such pressure. They're a mass now, a population, a conglomerate.

"Poe?" Finn asks. He crouches next to Poe, hand braced on the bulkhead. "You all right?"

When Poe got blown out of the hangar, he woke up in Finn's arms. Everything then was blistering and bright, so bright. Red and gold, vivid in agony as well as desire. Later, Iolo Arana gave Poe _so much shit_ for it: "shame about our fleet, but Dameron got his heart's darling to cop a good long feel, so I guess it all evens out". Connix and Karé hooted with laughter, crowed something about how hard it must be to be a hero, constantly getting thrown under, on top of, into the embrace of, an even hotter dude.

"You guys think I'm hot?" Poe had asked and passed the spice spliff after a good long drag. "Should've said something!"

"Oh, Dameron," Iolo said and slung an arm around his shoulders. "Pickings keep getting slimmer and slimmer all the time, but you're still not hot, sorry."

"Tripped, I guess," Poe says now.

"It's tricky back here," Finn says.

"Uneven."

"Yeah."

"Iolo?" Poe asks, the first jagged rock to shove itself out his mouth.

"No, _Finn_ , remember?" Finn frowns, peering at him more intently. He's a few seconds from checking how Poe's eyes focus, the rate of his pulse.

"Yeah, Finn, I know. Iolo? Is he--?" Poe can't remember. He can't even remember who's dead and who made it, what the fuck use is he? Iolo's one of his best friends, what about all the others who were only ever names and scraps of faces to him?

"Arana? The Keshian."

"Yeah." Poe looks at his hands, fingers spread like twigs. Snappable. "Forget it, I should know."

"He's here," Finn says. He sounds worried, but how does Poe even know that? He doesn't actually _know_ Finn, not like he'd thought he did, not like he _wanted_ to. Not like he'd fooled himself into believing he did. While Finn slept, Poe'd worked up the equivalent of several holo-novelas about their romance, their entwined destinies.

"So," Poe says as he tries to sit up a little straighter. "What brings you back here? Come here often?"

For a long time, Finn just looks at him, lips pressed together, eyes ticking slowly back and forth. Poe forces himself to look back, _really look_. Finn is more handsome than he remembers, which seems neither fair nor entirely possible, but he's looking for something else, too.

Honestly, he's also looking at the handsome. Smooth skin, radiant, eyes that take in everything, mouth luscious and overwhelming.

Never let it be said that Poe Dameron was not among the most superficial souls going.

"Are you flirting with me right now?" Finn asks.

He's got this. He's back in his own skin, warming a little, turning toward Finn. "Do you want me to flirt with you right now?"

"Heh," Finn says and swallows. His neck is strong, more smooth skin disappearing into his ratty top.

"'Cause I could," Poe says and pulls one knee up to his chest. "I could put it all on the line, flood you with bad lines backed by entirely earnest interest, I could make it so you'd just about die blushing."

"I don't know about that."

"Are you daring me?"

"I don't think so, no." Finn tips into the bulkhead and sprawls out next to Poe, his elbow nudging Poe's waist. 

Poe is sleepy now, suddenly, and cold. Still so cold. "All right. Maybe another time."

"Sure," Finn says and smiles at him. For a moment, he looks shy and nearly unbearably young, his gaze dropping. "I'd like that."

"Good to know," Poe says. He might be the worst person on this ship. He definitely is the worst person here, as a matter of fact. No one else would try to make a pass _now_.

Finn says, "It's okay."

"What's that?"

Finn huffs out a short, choked sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sob. "I don't know. Just felt like the right thing to say."

"Oh," Poe says, the loss stabbing him all over again. "Damn it."

Finn starts to say something else, but seems to think better of it.

"In my mind, see," Poe adds, "I mean, you have a lot of the answers. Most of them. The important ones."

Finn's smile flickers but doesn't catch. "That would be great."

Poe grins at him. "Wouldn't it? You'd be like this sage in a beautiful body, up from your coma, taking on all comers, saving the--. Whatever, you get it."

"Not really," Finn says. "You lost me at the beautiful body thing, and the saving everyone, well. That's Rey."

He sounds hoarse, tentative. Poe pats his hand, then, startled by how _warm_ it is, grasps it.

Finn looks down at their hands, then back up at Poe. 

"Indulge me," Poe says and he didn't mean, he's fairly sure, to make it sound quite so pathetic. But there's icy gravel cutting through his veins and every so often his heart hiccups oddly, and _they lost so many people_. He just wants to pretend for a little longer.

"Not an indulgence," Finn replies. He turns his hand so it's palm up, pressed to Poe's own, and interleaves their fingers. "Maybe you're not alone, you know?"

"My dad always said..." Poe starts, but he's slipping back into the cold, and his throat is too raw. The war is far from over, or else it's already done and they just haven't accepted that. Either way, this is not the time to do...whatever it is he's doing. Flirting, asking, _trying_. All the same, he's here, now, and Finn is warm and gentle, and this is scarier than Poe ever dreamed. "Yeah, maybe."

Finn tugs him closer still. Poe goes with it, shifts so they're pressed together, hip and thigh, their shoulders overlapping. The _Falcon_ shudders and heaves onward.

"Maybe definitely," Finn says after a while. 

"I'd hold you to that," Poe replies, "but that feels like it'd be a jinx. A bad one."

"Didn't figure you for superstitious, Poe Dameron."

Poe grins again, his eyes heavy, aches throbbing in every grinding joint of his skeleton. "Me, I'm a barrel of surprises."

"Good to meet you, then," Finn says. "Again."

"It's mutual, believe me," Poe tells him. He's got all the holo-novela stuff still in his heart, but this is better than wishing and hoping. Small and fragile as this is, this, _Finn_ , is real, bright-eyed and sweet-touched. Warm like only the living can be.


End file.
